Kiev Asks French TV Channel to Take Maidan Documentary Off the Air

Ukrainian diplomats to France lamented that the new documentary “Les Masques de la Revolution” (The Masks of Revolution) about Maidan events in Ukraine misinterprets the facts and asked the French national broadcaster not to air it.

The representatives of Ukraine’s embassy in Paris asked French TV Channel Canal+ to cancel the showing of the film about Maidan events scheduled for February 1. The request was initially posted on the embassy’s Facebook page, but later became unavailable.

According to the diplomats, “The Masks of Revolution,” directed by French moviemaker Paul Moreira gives a “misrepresented view on the situation in Ukraine.”

They said the documentary is “deception” rather than the example of the “media pluralism” and advised Canal + “to reconsider the possibility of airing the film on TV.”

The Ukrainian embassy has also suggested their list of documentaries about Maidan events, “hoping that one day these movies will be presented on Canal +.”

The synopsis to “The Masks of Revolution” as posted on the Canal+ website reads that the movie presents a special investigation of the events that unfolded in Ukraine in 2014. In particular, it portrays the actions by far-right radical groups backed by the US and the violence in the southern city of Odessa in May, 2014 incited by nationalists.

“Paul Moreira strips the masks of modern-day Ukraine and carries out an investigation on the firing line of the new 'cold war' between the East and the West,” the synopsis reads.

During the shooting period, Moreira, an acclaimed French TV reporter, talked to members of such notorious organizations as “The Right sector,” “Azov” and conducted his own inquiry on the role of Washington in the Ukrainian events.